Oh It Is Love
by xgossamerstars
Summary: Part of a 100-theme challenge on DA. Will be a series of oneshots, ratings and genre will vary.
1. Introduction

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Naruto, I do own the plot. Or what passes for the plot.  
**A/N**: Part of a hundred themes challenge I found on DeviantArt. I hope I'm not out of place using these themes because I don't exactly know who came up with them, I just found them. If you know where I should give credit tell me.

**Theme #1: Introduction.  
Rating: T.  
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort.  
Summary: Sixteen year old Kakashi and fourteen year old Iruka meet at the Memorial Stone one rainy night.****  
**

It was raining, but he didn't notice. He hardly ever noticed anything when he sat here, staring at that stone. That stupid, cold, unfeeling hunk of rock that was the only thing he had left of his parents...no, he didn't notice the rain. He didn't notice anything.

Fourteen year old Iruka sat in front of the rock and hugged his knees to his chest and didn't notice how cold he was, how wet the seat of his shorts was getting, how warm the tears felt against the windchapped skin of his dark cheeks. He stared intently at the Memorial Stone, not even seeing his parents names anymore; the driving rain obscured most of his vision beyond a one-foot radius. He didn't even notice when he began to sneeze, to shiver.

Someone else, however, did.

Perched in the treetops nearby, not bothering to mask his chakra nor hide himself in the leaves, sat Hatake Kakashi, just back from a mission. His mask, soaked through by rain, blood and sweat, lay pooled around his neck. He wasn't worried about the Umino kid seeing his face, the rain was too hard for that...but he found that he was beginning to worry about Iruka himself. The kid was only two years younger than he was, but he looked...weak, somehow. The dark-skinned genin had begun to tremble some time ago, and Kakashi had waited for him to get up and sprint away...but he hadn't, and now the boy had started sneezing, too, and still he wouldn't leave.

Kakashi rocked back on his heels, biting his lip and weighing his options. Umino was often here when Kakashi came, but that wasn't what was bothering him; Kakashi could visit the stone another time. No, what was worrying him was, if that kid stayed out in this downpour much longer, he was liable to catch pneumonia or something...and, as a jounin-level ninja about to be inducted into ANBU, wasn't it Kakashi's duty to protect kids like Umino?

_Oh come off it, Hatake, _Obito's taunting, good-natured voice rose in the back of Kakashi's mind. _The kid looks sad and lonely and lost, and he reminds you of yourself. That's why you wanna help him, ya great big softy._

"Ne," Kakashi mumbled. He pulled up his mask, wincing at the stench of it, and dropped out of the tree. His feet hit the wet ground with a _sploosh_ sound, sending little darts of mud to settle on Kakashi's already-filthy clothes. He squelched his way over to the Umino kid, and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder.

Iruka jumped, sneezed, turned around and sneezed again. "Wha...? Who--" He paused to sneeze into his shirtsleeve and continued, "Who are you? I've seen you before..." Another sneeze, this one followed by a small fit of coughing.

Kakashi, young and still not famous enough for everyone in Konoha to know his name, extended a hand. "Get up, kid. You're gonna catch your death out here. I'm Kakashi, by the way."

"Wait...you mean Hatake Kakashi? Wasn't your father the White Fang?" Iruka asked, taking the offered hand and letting the jounin pull him to his feet.

Kakashi winced slightly at the name, but he had the feeling that this kid didn't mean to shame him with his father's memory. He nodded in reply and asked, "That's me. And you're Umino Iruka, right?"

"Yeah...how did you know me?" Iruka asked, cocking his head to one side. The gesture was so adorable that Kakashi had to smile beneath his mask.

"Your parents were heroes, kid," Kakashi replied. "And while I'm sure they appreciate you visiting them at the Memorial Stone, I don't think they'd like you to catch your death out here. You should get home."

At that, a smile broke across Iruka's dark face. The smile was infectious; Kakashi felt his own grin growing bigger.

"Yeah, I will. Thanks, Kakashi-san." Iruka made a quick bow before taking to the trees, and Kakashi, oblivious to the impact that this little genin would one day have on his life, moved to take Iruka's place in front of the stone.


	2. Hold My Hand

**A/N:** Still don't know if it's bad for me to be using these themes. Oh well. Here it goes again!

**35th Theme: Hold My Hand.  
Rating: T.  
Genre: Humor, Romance.  
Summary: Kakashi has to get his wisdom teeth taken out, but he'll need just a little support from Iruka to get through it.**

"I am _not _taking my mask off for that…that…that _butcher."_

"Kakashi, he's a dentist. You have to take your mask off for him to get in your mouth."

Kakashi crossed his arms obstinately, narrowing his one visible eye at Iruka. "Then he can just stay the fuck _out _of my mouth."

Iruka's warm eyes hardened to something like flint—that wasn't his teacher-look, or his angry-boyfriend look. That was his shinobi-look, and Kakashi had a split second to wonder why the chuunin had never made it to ANBU Black Ops with a look like that before he was cowering on the sofa.

"Get up, _akanbo,_" Iruka said, "And go brush your damn teeth. If you don't get your wisdom teeth taken out, you're going to keep having those migraines you love to complain about so much, and when you get one in the middle of a mission and can't make your Sharingan work right because of it, don't come crying to me."

"I am _not _a baby!" Kakashi insisted, getting to his feet and stalking to the bathroom to do as he was told. "I just don't want some madman poking around in my mouth…or posting pictures of my bare face all over Konoha…"

"Dr. Higorashi doesn't even know who the hell you are," Iruka said, his voice gentler now that he knew he had won the battle. "I even gave him your name as Sharingan no Kakashi—that's what most of the civilians know you as—and all he asked was if you were a ninja."

"I love the way you lower my self esteem, Rukababe. Really, I do," Kakashi muttered. He pulled his mask down and bared his pearly white, slightly crowded teeth. _Wonder if they'll stop being so close together when I get those other ones yanked out? _He thought idly, lathering his toothbrush full of the disgusting lemon-flavored toothpaste that Iruka was so partial to. He himself preferred cinnamon, but he had run out the morning before and hadn't bothered to buy any.

"I thought you would appreciate the fact that he didn't know you," Iruka said, leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom. He hadn't bothered to dress yet; he was bare to the waist and his hair hung in lank bits around his face. "That way you won't panic about something as absurd as…ah, what did you say…'some madman posting pictures of your bare face all over Konoha.'"

Kakashi looked up from the sink after he spit out a mouthful of lemony foam and stuck his tongue out. Iruka's sarcasm could be antagonizing sometimes, but as long as he stood there in all his half naked glory, Kakashi would forgive him.

Kakashi rinsed his mouth out and spit once more, patting his face dry and pulling a clean mask out of the drawer on his side of the sink. He pulled it over his head but left it pooled around his neck until it was time for he and Iruka to actually leave.

"So, how bad is this going to hurt?" Kakashi asked, as he watched Iruka go through the ritual he himself had just performed. "Shuriken to the shoulder bad, or kunai in the gut bad, or what?"

"Ah hash mish oush whesh Ah wash abush ifeefsh," Iruka began, his mouth full of toothpaste.

"Say wha?" Kakashi cocked a silvery eyebrow and waited for Iruka to rinse.

"I said, I had mine out when I was about fifteen," Iruka wiped his mouth on the towel and reached into his own drawer for a ponytail holder, "I couldn't go on missions or anything for about a week and I had to live off soup, but it didn't hurt."

"You're telling me some tooth doctor ripped out four of your teeth from underneath your gums and it didn't hurt?" Kakashi asked, his eye wide.

"No, dummy. They put you to sleep, you don't actually feel them taking the teeth out," Iruka insisted. He crossed back into their bedroom and opened the closet, searching for a clean uniform.

Kakashi blanched. "Put you…to sleep?" He repeated, his voice squeaking on the last syllable.

"Yes, Kashi, sleep," Iruka's voice was condescending. "Would you rather them do it while you're wide awake?"

"No," Kakashi's eyes roamed over the planes of Iruka's back before the tight tshirt hid it from view, then his mind refocused on the issue at hand. "But…how do they put you to sleep, exactly? Is it like breathing gas?"

"Oh no, they don't do that anymore," Iruka tossed Kakashi's uniform to him and closed the closet. "I think it's an injection."

Kakashi swallowed hard. Ex ANBU jounin though he may be, Hatake Kakashi did _not_ like needles.

At all.

"That…they don't…they don't put you under for the shot, by chance?" Kakashi asked, trying to get dressed and block Iruka's progress to the door at the same time.

"That makes no sense, lovedove," Iruka grinned. "Don't worry, the injection doesn't hurt that badly. Now, shall we walk, or am I going to have to teleport you?"

"I'll walk," Kakashi answered, a little too quickly.

The walk, of course, took an agonizingly short amount of time. Once they reached Higorashi Dental Associates, Kakashi was near to sweating blood. His breath was coming in shallow gasps, and everything seemed to be growing…darker…

It all jerked back to bright hot reality, however, when Iruka saw through this ruse and slapped him on the back of the head.

"Suck it up, Kashi," Iruka said. "I'll go with you to meet the doctor, but after that I have to get out, okay?"

Kakashi tried to insist that this was not in any way okay, but Iruka was leading him by the hand to what would be his operating room and pretending not to hear.

The doctor came in a few minutes later and went over the protocol of wisdom tooth extraction with Kakashi. The jounin tried to protest—loudly—when the doctor informed him that not only would his anesthesia be in the form of an injection, but that there would aslo be an IV. Iruka's face, however, told him that resistence was futile. He accepted his fate quietly.

"I'll be back to set up your IV in a moment, Hatake-san," Dr. Hirogashi bowed slightly and left the room, and Iruka got up to leave as well. Suddenly, Kakashi's fear of needles seemed overpowering.

"Rukababy?" he asked timidly, looking back over his shoulder to see Iruka. "Will you do something for me?"

"What is it now, Kashi?" Iruka asked, pausing in the doorway. The doctor was coming back down the hall, the equipment for the IV in his hand.

"Rukababy…hold my hand? While they're putting the IV thingy in? Please?"

Iruka opened his mouth to say something smart, but his lips curved in a smile instead.

"All right, lovedove. I'll hold your hand."


	3. Pain Through the Fire

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.  
A/N: I burned my hands in a kitchen fire once, and that sort of inspired this ficlet thingy.

**Theme #88 and #89: Pain and Through the Fire.  
Rating: T.  
Genre: Angst/Drama.  
Summary: After a gas tank explodes, Kakashi is left with the worst injury of his life.****  
**

He had no idea that pain like this existed.

His arms were on fire; they were burning like the deepest, centermost part of an inferno, burning like the very pits and bowels of hell, burning and burning and burning until it felt like his flesh and tissue were trying to crawl away from the bone just to escape the fucking _burning._

He had been injured before; he had been cut and stabbed and slashed open, he had broken bones and torn muscles and lost an eye for God's sake, but this...this was entirely different, entirely new, and entirely unbearable.

He cried for medication, any kind of medication, he cried for it like a starving infant would cry for milk but he wanted it more than any starving creature could ever want sustenance. He wanted it like he wanted to breathe; but did he even want to breathe anymore, when breathing meant he was still alive to feel?

They knocked him out, of course; he would have died from the pain if they didn't. They knocked him out for hours upon hours on end, but he always woke to the little demons that nibbled away his nerves with tiny flamethrower teeth and he always woke screaming to be knocked out again.

Then one day he woke, and the pain was less. It was still there, still digging into the fiber of his being...but it was digging less deeply. He found he could form a coherent sentence, asking in a polite (if rather strained) tone of voice for the medicine he had formerly screeched for.

When he woke the next time, he found he could focus on other things; he could focus on the voices of the people in the room around him, when before the pain had overwhelmed nearly all his senses. He could hear Tsunade's voice mumbling about chakra transfers and skin grafts, and how visitors still were not allowed, Iruka would just have to wait.

Kakashi was not blind, but both his eyes had been bandaged over. He wasn't sure why, but he was certain he could still see--he was just only being permitted to see the inside of gauze wrap right now.

Then the pain hitched up a notch, and he asked for more medicine. He was given a pill that didn't knock him out, but it soothed the flames that were threatening to take over his arms into brightly glowing embers instead.

"Tsunade?" he asked tentatively, once he was able to push his aching, throbbing arms to the back of his mind once more. "I know you're there, Hokage-sama, I can hear you."

"I'm here, Hatake," she replied quickly. "Tell me, how bad is it now?"

"It's better," he said. "Nothing I can't deal with, as long as you keep the pills coming. Why are my eyes bandaged?"

"Flash blindness," she replied. "When the gas tank blew, you must have been looking straight at it—even though you were so far away it temporarily blinded you. How you managed to get out of there is a fucking mystery, Hatake. Do you remember?"

For a moment, Kakashi actually had no idea what she was talking about. He had been so obsessed with the pain for so long that he hadn't stopped to remember what had caused it. Now that it wasn't the only thing on his mind, however, he was able to recall most all of what had happened.

He had been trapped on the wrong side of the building when the gas tank blew. He was a good three hundred feet away, but he was staring right at it when it went up in flames. It caught his half of the building on fire and he had been completely trapped. Perhaps he had been near enough to an exit to risk running through the flames, which he assumed he must have done…he found he didn't remember anything specific after the bright flash of the gas tank blowing.

"I remember the explosion, but nothing else," he replied. "Any idea what happened after that?"

"We saw you walk out of the flames," she answered, "You must have been close to the exit, then. It was damn stupid of you to wear that sleeveless shirt, Hatake, I hope you know. That's why you're in the shape you're in right now."

"It was hot that day," he answered, a little defensively.

"It got hotter," she mumbled. "Anyway, you were walking out with one arm forward and the other over the exposed part of your face. That mask of yours saved your meal ticket, Hatake."

"Meal ticket? Oh, my face you mean," he said. "Was anyone else injured?"

"Two dead, one injured. Obviously, you're the injured one. Now go back to sleep, will you? Your chakra levels are still pretty low."

"I heard you say I can't have visitors yet…why?"

Tsunade sighed heavily, then Kakashi felt her skilled hands peeling away the dressing over his eyes.

"It's really only Iruka," she whispered, as she saw Kakashi's eyes widen in horror. "Do you really want him to see this?"

Kakashi's arms no longer resembled arms so much as long rolls of dirty hamburger; his hands were in decent shape, having been protected by his armored gloves, but his arms…his arms. God, just...his arms.

He felt his gorge rising and he leaned over the side of the bed, vomiting into the nearby trashcan.

Habitually, he raised his arm to wipe his mouth, but moving the mutilated limb sent a shockwave of agony through him. Tsunade wiped his mouth as if he were a messy child, and Kakashi hung his head in humiliation.

"You've received skin grafts, Hatake. They won't look like this forever. There will be some significant scarring, but nothing like this. Nothing at all."

"Let Iruka in," Kakashi said quietly, as if he hadn't heard this statement at all. "Please."

Tsunade looked a little startled, but she went out into the hall nonetheless. A moment later, Iruka burst through the door, a joyful cry of, "Kashi!" coming from his lips.

Then:

"Oh…Kashi. Oh, God…"

Iruka sat down in the visitor's chair near Kakashi's bed, staring at the raw meat that had once consituted two perfectly good and useful appendages. "Kashi…I…"

Kakashi smiled, perhaps a little too widely, perhaps a little too cheerfully. "It really doesn't hurt much anymore, Ruka. Don't worry. They took my eye bandages off today and I wanted to see you, and I know you've been wanting to see me so stop…stop looking at them. Please."

With an effort, Iruka tore his eyes away from Kakashi's arms and brought them to rest on the jounin's mismatched eyes instead. He smiled weakly and said, "I want to hug you, Kashi, but I might hurt you…"

"I'd hug you too, but I'd pass out from the pain," Kakashi joked. "I love you, Ruka."

"I love you too."


End file.
